TheBrownBottle

Isak LW and Willock-Bruno-Joelinton midfield just doesn’t look right for me. Especially the midfield - same one vs Villa and Arsenal. I know Burn is getting his usual hammering but honestly Bruno’s over hitting and under hitting of straightforward passes is now becoming annoying.

Our back line really needs at least one midfielder sat in front of it.

Yes fucking yes hate these twats now wake up lads

Wake up ffs

Yes Pope

I was screaming at Joelinton not to do that. Stupid fucker

This is comically bad so far. Leeds are so utterly shite that they’ve done little with it.

Not only do I think they aren’t, they don’t need to at present.

Burn stood still but that’s pisspoor goalkeeping. Suicidal to push the ball forward

Seriously what the fuck has happened to our back line this last couple of months?

Yep. Also, ‘fan favourite Nobby Solano’ was told he wasn’t needed by Robson either - several years earlier. Don’t get me wrong, Allardyce was fucking shite at NUFC, but why a player being a ‘fan favourite’ should enter a manager’s thinking is beyond me. And of course you’re both spot on re the Modric / Keegan thing. But then, there is a tweet from Hope on this page where he’s talking about Kilcline and Kelly saving NUFC in 92/93, when of course it was the season before, so maybe his NUFC calendar is a Julian one or something and he’s a year out on everything. edit: it would also be canny if Hope would stop writing motivational articles for the opposition before we play them. I bet that cunt Allardyce reads the Mail - he seems the sort. At least wait until afterwards for the hit piece. But then he’s a balloon who writes for a hate rag and thinks the moon landings were fake …

Yep, which is what Berlusconi was at the forefront of. John Hall used to love banging on about joining it. I’ve got on my bookshelf ‘A Pictorial History of Soccer’ published in 1969. In it, there is talk of the ‘inevitability’ of a ‘European Super League’ formed by clubs like Benfica, Celtic and Man Utd (it was 1969). This racket has been around for more than half a century - the constant ‘threat’ of breakaway. The ‘big clubs’ raise it every so often to get more and more of what they want. Ultimately it’s destroyed true European competition and replace it with a staid, boring European Cup with the same seven or eight clubs competing for it again and again and again.

Yeah, fair enough though of course there is a good chance we were genuinely interested in some of them.

Yeah, I think it’s definitely a good thing. One of the few ‘credits in the bank’ for UEFA in recent times

I do think he’s less scattergun than the tabloid hack, but completely agree that he’s a bit of a cunt

All European comps were straight knockouts until 1992 when the European Cup changed to ‘Champions League’ and added a group stage - though weirdly the groups decided the finalists. The group stages are only about two things: more money from more games, and ensuring the ‘big boys’ can recover from losses against ‘lesser clubs’. It’s sporting cowardice, but Berlusconi and co in the mid-90s were terrified of the AC Milans and Barcelonas of the world losing too early.

They all have to start somewhere History means a lot too - but it’s UEFA’s third competition. I’m really glad they’ve started it up - and that Roma won the first iteration, which raises the profile. I personally hate what the ‘Champions League’ has become - the nadir was the Liverpool vs Spurs final - two clubs which hadn’t won a domestic title in a combined total of c.90 years vying to become champions of Europe. Fucking ludicrous. There’s no fixing that now, but a third tournament means more clubs have a chance to compete, and it presents a chance for some of the nations which used to be competitive to be so in Europe again. No, it’s absolutely correct that all European nations have entries. I detest the smug elitism of the ‘big five’ European leagues. As if fucking PSG or RB Leipzig have better pedigree than Dynamo Kiev, Steaua Bucharest or Red Star Belgrade.

I’m glad Europe has three tournaments again. I get why the Cup Winner’s Cup was scrapped - most European nations don’t give a shite about their domestic cups. But there was a massive hole caused by its absence and a bloated revised European Cup. Personally, I’d happily see the European Cup to return to being what it was, which would help restore Eastern European football. No chance that’s happening now though.

It would sit above a League Cup straight away for me.

Even though he’s a tiresome Bruce-loving troll with no ability to forecast a club budget, Edwards has in the past been spot-on re transfer rumours. Given the journal he writes for, he also doesn’t sit in the ‘need transfer news to flog papers’ world of tabloid hackery, so he doesn’t need to stick his neck out every single day.

Having said that, having someone who can take a genuinely dangerous corner wouldn’t be a bad thing

Even if we’re after him, there’s zero chance we’re smashing the wage structure and paying him £200k/pw base. It strikes me as more horseshit put out by agents trying to get a better deal.

Haha yep, the fixture list is fun like that sometimes. Thirty-odd thousand collectively thinking ‘narrow miss that’ when Daveeed first picked up the ball.

I always found it both irritating and funny to watch PFMs doing European football punditry. They’re paid exorbitant sums to watch football and talk shite about it for literally minutes every so often - yet their knowledge of anything outside of England is minimal. And if we were talking about the Maltese third division, I’d think ‘fair enough’. But I know they’ll watch an all-Milanese CL semi and still be unsure about many of the players on the pitch. They’re paid to watch football and talk about it - and even watching football is apparently just too great a burden.

They definitely were Zenden was a good footballer tbf - though not in Robert’s class for me. Franny Jeffers … not so much There’s a couple of those moments in our history. What happens if Keegan signs John Salako as planned in summer ‘95 - and isn’t forced to turn PSG’s left sided forward when he heads to Coventry instead? https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football-salako-dismisses-newcastle-as-a-move-too-far-1587765.html